AUX Studio

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Senior Director Product Management of Livingston International Inc.

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Specializes in customs brokerage and trade compliance, and offers international trade consulting, global trade management and global forwarding

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with the service provider?

We lacked consistent design and user flow across our products. We engaged AUX Studio to establish a product naming convention, a unified user experience and a seamless look and feel across all products. We asked AUX to create a universal set of design standards to help our users find what they are looking for and achieve their goals with as less friction as possible. 

Our process for obtaining user feedback was sporadic and we had to establish a new approach to intake user feedback early and often to allow for continuous improvements, better prioritization of features and assurance that our roadmap is customer centric and focused on solving their problems.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

AUX Studio implemented a lean-UX process that included discovery, testing, and analysis to help us identify potential problems, fix usability issues, enhance the overall user experience, and identify new product opportunities.

They completed user interface designs for multiple products across various customer segments and user personas. They established a Design System, that included fully coded design components and page templates for front-end development implementation. AUX also facilitated team collaboration sessions to ensure that our product owners, designers, and developers understood the information gathered during the discovery phase of our UX process to ensure cross-team alignment on priorities.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Since working with AUX Studio, we have received positive feedback and great client testimonials. Clients appreciate that we are involving them throughout the design and development stages. Our user adoption has increased by 50% in the past year since launching our new design. Our Design System, developed and maintained by AUX, has created great efficiencies for our developers. 

We can consistently release new product features every two to three weeks. Prior to the implementation of the Design System release implemented new releases on a quarterly basis. The Design System’s fully coded CSS and HTML page templates paints a clear picture for our developers. This saves time and mitigates development re-work.

How did the service provider perform from a project management standpoint?

AUX Studio is well organized and good at providing clear steps and timelines. Scope, deliverables, costs, and timing are well defined prior to initiating any work. Project plans, capacity plans and burndown charts are provided regularly. We have 30-minute check-in meetings to receive project status updates and work in-progress reviews. They’ve established processes to ensure that we are providing timely requirements and feedback to keep key deliverables on schedule. We’re located in Canada and the U.S. and the time zone difference between our team and theirs is never an impediment.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a financial software company that provides solutions for equity, forex, and institutional brokers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with AUX Studio?

We were looking to create a website to showcase our services and products, and start a marketing campaign from there.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The project started with a discovery process where we discussed the core values of our company, who our clients were, and what we were looking to achieve. AUX Studio then came back to us with some suggestions and brand guidelines for a new logo, and new brand assets designed around our documentations — the design language went into the development of the website as well.

From there they custom-built our website from beginning to end, and delivered a content management system. For this part, they exploited different looks, styles, and wireframes, and they guided us on what they thought would work best. We did most of the technical content, but they provided us with the copyrighting services, to make sure that what we had written down flowed properly on the website in terms of the language.

We have an ongoing relationship with them in terms of SEO, PPC, and our marketing materials.

What is the team composition?

We work with about 4–5 of them throughout the process.

How did you come to work with AUX Studio?

They did a website for one of our mutual clients, which we were impressed with.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent just under £20,000 GBP (approximately $28,300 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing partnership started in November 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

Our website has garnered positive feedback from people and we’ve gained more clients since partnering with AUX Studio. We’re still relatively new to the partnership and they haven’t started on the marketing campaign yet, so I’m not sure if we’ve reached the full benefit yet.

How did AUX Studio perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re very good from a project management standpoint. They deliver on time, and if things are being held up, it’s because of us not them. They’re also very regimented on time frames, which has been quite helpful for us to stay focused. We usually have weekly phone conferences, and we’d be approving things with the designers every now in between.

We also use Miro to manage the project and see changes on the fly.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re impressed with their ability to understand our business and deliver what we ask, even though we initially didn’t come to them with a lot of information.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Honestly, I haven’t had any negative experiences with them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice would be to have as many people in the conversation as much as possible — the more information you give them, the better results you’ll get.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Communication Director of The African Conservation Development Group, an experienced developer of integrated land-use rights in Africa.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire AUX Studio?

A website for our new research and development hub forestLAB.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Our strategic communications consultant Africa Practice conducted a global search for suitable web developers to suit our purpose. The deciding factor was experience in UX and creative design, as well as ability to interpret the brief.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

We were taken through a process which interrogated our stakeholder audiences, key messages per stakeholder group, and the communication mechanisms we could utilise to convey key information. We were presented with wireframes, which we then interrogated and finalised in an iterative process. The wireframes and content was then placed into design.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We worked with 3 people, including the strategic director, the senior designer / coder and the project manager.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The website is new so we cannot yet gauge traffic, but the forestLAB partners are delighted with the structure and design of the website and its encapsulation of the partnership concept behind forestLAB. We are also delighted with the CMS system which makes editing and managing content changes and updates extremely easy.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

It was extremely effective. The process followed was very thorough and we were kept up to date through regular interactive sessions. Budget and timelines were strictly adhered to.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

We were extremely impressed at the professionalism of the team, their knowledge of website design, and their commitment to the user experience. They listened intently to what we wanted and interpreted our brief and requests very well, often exceeding our expectations. They were also extremely interested and passionate about our project, keen to know as much as possible about it, and excellent at interpreting what we wanted to convey.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

To be honest, we can't find any room for improvement. They were efficient, on time, and on budget, as well as excellent at design, user experience, and took time to train us on the CMS. I can't think of any area for improvement. As a consequence, we have already given them another project.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO of a software development business based in Cape Town, South Africa and we serve enterprises, start-ups and design agencies both in South Africa and internationally. I look after our client and vendor relationships.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire AUX Studio?

We had taken on a global data insights company as a new client and they were looking to us to help them build and develop a new financial services application for the African market. We needed assistance with initial product design, market research, protoyping, brand development and UX/UI development as we do not do that in-house.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to achieve a clickable prototype that our client could take to internal and external stakeholders to demonstrate the concept and functionality so that they could get approval to move onto the development and build of the minimum viable product.

SOLUTION

How did you select AUX Studio?

We have worked with AUX on many projects before and knew that they had the skills and capacity for this project. Based on our previous work together we have a high degree of trust in the AUX team.

Describe the project in detail.

Once we got project kick-off approval from our client we held a series of discovery meetings with our client, our team and AUX to discuss goals and objectives. This led to a series of initial wireframes which we tested with internal stakeholders and some end-users.

One of the requirements that emerged in the discussions was that our client's brand was not strong enough for this product so AUX was tasked with coming up with a name and branding for the product as well. After the initial approach was approved we then started to work closely with a potential partner who would be a marketplace vendor on the product.

This process led to a more refined set of wireframes based on the detailed business processes that emerged. The final stage was the production of high fidelity, clickable protoypes of the proposed product in Invision. These were provided to our client to use for internal and external stakeholder validation and approval.

What was the team composition?

We worked closely with the founder of AUX on the project and an AUX designer. The founder dealt with strategic design issues and the designer with the day-to-day design work on the wireframes and the prototytpe. The team did not change over the course of the project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Within 2 months of the delivery of the prototype, the project won funding approval from an internal social innovation fund of our client. It was one of only 3 projects out of a total of 16 submitted to win approval on the basis of its innovativeness. This funding approval will allow the project to proceed to the next stage of development which was our objective.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We worked very well together from a project management perspective. We used Slack as our go-to communications platform. Miro and Invision are our preferred collaboration tools for workshopping and design.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

First and foremost AUX have an excellent design sensibility and aesthetic and their designs are always fresh, modern and in tune with the latest digital design trends.

In addition to that, and what distinguishes them from other designers we have worked with, is that they have an excellent strategic understanding of the role and importance of design in the product development process.

They have also spent a lot of time and effort developing a product development and design methodology and process which is very helpful with clients who are often not sure what they want. Importantly they are also skilled in helping, coaching and nudging clients along in that process.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Occasionally when they get really busy with other projects, we can struggle with scheduling and timelines can slip, but this happens rarely and the end product is always well worth the wait.